


Hell Is Other People

by pensivetense (Styre)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, I wrote this instead of sleeping and it SHOWS, Jonah and Elias except they’re both himbos but in opposite directions, Local fic author thinks they’re funny and is wrong more at eleven, also implied addiction problems used for humour, lot of swears in this one sorry, this is a hot mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26689057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Styre/pseuds/pensivetense
Summary: Based on that one tumblr post that I CANNOT FIND about og!elias just deciding to fuck it and be evil with Jonah except now it’s crack because calculus has melted my brain.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 55





	Hell Is Other People

Elias wakes up. He immediately regrets it. 

“Holy  _ fuck _ , Jonah,” he groans. “How much did you  drink last night? Or no, actually. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

_ You were there the whole time _ _,_ says Jonah smugly from the back of their headspace where he is currently _not_ dealing with a massive pounding headache.

“You know I zone out whenever you and Peter start monologing at each other. Fuck. I’m pretty sure that whatever our blood alcohol content is, it shouldn’t be humanly survivable.”

_ Lucky us, then _ _,_ says Jonah.  _ Not being human and all. _

“Listen,” says Elias as he stumbles out into the kitchen and sees the myriad of empty wine bottles, as well as one single full glass of water and a bottle of Advil, “you have officially lost the right to  _ever_ again roast me for being a stoner.”

He picks up the glass and the Advil and takes approximately a half-dozen, which still only has about a fifty percent chance of working because fuck nonsensical Avatar physiology. 

_ And yet I know that I don’t have to deal with the after effects, whereas in all your debaucherous youth you never had such a guarantee. So who’s really the foolish one? _

“First off, coming down from a high doesn’t feel like  _this._ Second, I’m in your brain, you dumbfuck, and I  know for a fact that you got drunk off your tits prior to 1996. So shove it up your arse.”

_ It’s not my turn on the meatsuit, so I’m afraid you’ll have to take care of that yourself.  _

“I hate you so much. I am in hell. I am actually in hell for my crime of aiding you in your quest for world domination. Like, the Sartre No Exit hell except it’s just you and me stuck in a body together for eternity, and I have to know things like who the fuck Sartre is because you’re actually insufferable.”

_ You... are aware of what the end goal of my, em, ‘quest for world domination’ is, yes? I can assure you that there will be worse things out there than Sartre.  _

“Oh, like what, Dante?”

_Please, the_ Inferno _is very entertaining. If I truly wanted to torture you, I’d make you read the complete works of Bentham._

“ _Yes_ , Jonah, everyone knows you’re salty because you had to wade through a bunch of philosophy you didn’t understand in order to plan your evil eye tower. Especially me. I especially know that about you.”

_ Philosophy is Spiral-aligned.  _

“And yet you read so damned much of it because you just can’t bear to  _ not get _ something. I mean, that bit’s your own fault for picking the Eye. ‘Knows all, understands none’... yeah, checks out.”

_ I’ll have you know that the Eye is objectively the best Patron. It’s intellectual, it’s dignified, it doesn’t turn you into a human candle or a worm hive or a mannequin or whatever the People’s Church has going on— _

“And the aesthetic’s excellent, yes, I know. But if you’re trying to imply that the Institute isn’t a cult, then I have some news to break to you. Besides, as a search engine, the Eye’s like... if Bing had a love child with Google Scholar except every article’s written by the worst parts of 4chan. And you can’t get SparkNotes, which, no offence, you _desperately_ need.”

_ You’re very drunk. _

“Yeah, whose fault is that?”

The doorbell takes this opportunity to ring. 

“Oh, fuck  _ off _ .”

_ Actually, I would get that if I were you. _

“Have I mentioned I hate you?”

He stumbles over and gets it anyway. 

It’s a delivery pizza. The man who’s delivering it looks slightly concerned at the state of Elias, which sharpens into fear when Elias nips into his mind and Beholds him. There are perks to having Jonah’s eyes in his skull, and it takes the edge off the headache, at least. 

“Never mind,” says Elias, to the increased terror of the delivery man, “I love you. I’m in love.” He takes the box, tipping with a fifty pound note because 1) Jonah carries those regularly, like a wanker, 2) he’s still feeling a bit spiteful, and 3) he’s not a complete monster and the pizza man fucking deserves it. 

_ You’re not even into men. _

“I’m not into anyone. Anyway, why else would I not just take that melon baller that you have for some reason and carve my eyes—oh, sorry,  _ your _ eyes—out right now?”

_ Because it wouldn’t cure your hangover and, in fact, you’d probably die of alcohol poisoning? _

“And because I love you. Drunk you gets me hangover pizza and scophoboic—scobo—fuck it, delivery men with stage fright.”

Elias punctuates this by trying to shove an entire slice of Hawaiian into his mouth at once. It’s... not quite successful. 

_ You’re cleaning that. _

“Firstly,” says Elias, around his mouthful, “neither of us has actually done our own laundry for decades. Secondly, it’s your own fault for falling asleep in your suit.”

_ Disgusting manners. Would never have been tolerated in my day. I don’t know why I put up with you.  _

“Because otherwise you’d have to deal with your own hangovers? And you’d end up with no one to gripe to but Peter Lukas, except when you want to gripe about Peter and you’d have to call up, I don’t know, Annabelle or someone, since you shot Gertrude?”

_ Ending the world is exhausting work and I will not apologise for the ways I cope with stress. No one has ever done what I am going to do. I have already staved off death, and someday I will defeat it entirely. I know more about the true nature of the world and the Powers than anyone else in the history of humankind, I have come farther and accomplished more— _

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Listen, I’m not going in today, am I? No offence, but I really cannot deal with pretending to be you pretending to be me with a BAC of... ugh. Point four one. Congratulations on cheating death once more this morning, Jonah; that’s really not... you’re lucky the Eye likes you.”

_Likes us, you mean._

Elias shrugs. “What’s that they say? Not my monkey, not my circus. You’re the one who wants to make the entities your bitch, or whatever. All I did was get my eyes stolen.”

_ You have been Beholding things all morning. You literally just Beheld your BAC. Stop living in denial. _

“I’m not going to have this argument again, especially not right now. I’m going to eat my pizza and pass out on the couch, and then clean this travesty of an apartment.”

_ You have a cleaning problem. _

“You have an alcohol problem. And a latent laudanum problem. And a murder problem. And quite frankly a multitude of relationship problems. I could go on. Let me clean.”

_ You didn’t mention the god complex, should I be concerned or flattered? I still can’t believe that you somehow manage to be both a stoner and an organisation freak. How does it feel to know you’ll never love another person the way you love Microsoft Excel? _

“You’re the one who decided to body-snatch a file clerk. Though really, you should be grateful. The state of the admin at your Institute certainly thanks me.”

_ Just be glad you never worked in the Archives. _

“Listen, I do not usually condone murder, but Gertrude Robinson had it coming.”

When Elias finally cedes control again the next morning, Jonah has to admit that it  _ is _ nice to walk around a tidy apartment. It’s really all of the advantages of a housekeeper without the unfortunate drawbacks of having to let someone into his space where they might die of improper artefact exposure or worse, not die and go about their lives  _ knowing _ things about him, even if it is only that he indulges Elias’s penchant for weed socks.

He doesn’t know what went wrong with this transfer, exactly—or rather, he doesn’t know for certain; he does have guesses—but Elias is not the  _ worst _ person to share custody of a body with. It’s kind of nice, actually, not having to be in control all the time, being able to sit back and observe and Behold without the bother of physicality. 

He sighs and sinks down at his desk. Now, if he plays his cards right...

_ Hey, what are you doing? _

“Just a bit of accounting. Our donors have been particularly generous this year, so this might take a while.”

He clicks on something at random. It turns the column he’s working on blue. 

“Oh,  _ damn _ . That wasn’t what I meant to—“

He clicks something else. He can  feel Elias twitch, right behind his eyes. 

He manages to add three unnecessary rows in the middle of his Leitner budget and take the running average of the explosives budgets for the past five years before Elias shoves him out of the way. 

“Oh, go Behold something.  _ My _ spreadsheets.”

Yes, this body really is working out for the best. 

**Author's Note:**

> I CANNOT ART BUT THIS WOULDN'T LEAVE ME ALONE SO:
> 
> (also I can no longer picture Elias without Ben Meredith facial hair it's a curse)


End file.
